


No Stranger to You or Me

by Dryad



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Fluffity fluff fluff FLUFF, Gen, X Files Lyric Wheel 2002
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:44:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dryad/pseuds/Dryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm Going to Graceland</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Stranger to You or Me

~*~

Bowie was on the radio singing about the golden years while she leafed through the Lake Havasu casefile yet again. With a sigh, she closed the folder and tossed it into the back seat, giving it the consideration it deserved. As she did so, Bowie segued into Elvis. She eyed Mulder. 

Her head-bopping, seed-nibbling, fingers-tapping-on-the-steering-wheel partner. 

Arms folded, she shifted in her seat, facing him as much as she comfortably could. "Alright, what gives?"

He glanced at her, a smile fit to smite the hearts of many a woman, and not a few men, gracing his curvaceous lips. "What gives what?"

"Elvis!" She motioned sharply towards the dashboard. "What is this fascination with The King?"

A full fledged grin broke out on his face when he looked at her again, and she knew that somehow he'd seen her aborted air quotes. 

"You remember that girl I told you about, Debbie Wiltse?"

"The one who moved off-island after she got pregnant?"

Mulder nodded and spat a husk out the open window. "She was an Elvis fanatic. I mean, she saved up all of her money from babysitting, lawnmowing, birthday gifts. We even, god," he shook his head ruefully. "I can't believe I'm telling you this, but we even had a little lemonade stand one summer."

The Great Fox Mulder, entrepreneur. She was never, ever, ever going to tell him that she and Charlie had done the same thing. 

"We made Samantha sit in front and demonstrate her lemon-squeezing abilities whenever a car drove by. We figured a seven year-old in a sundress was good advertising."

"Did you make a lot of money?"

"Not at a racy dime a glass. Anyway, Debbie finagled her Aunt Marion into taking her to Elvis' one and only Boston concert in 1971," Mulder shook his head. "It was all she talked about for weeks."

Scully frowned. "And that's how you became an Elvis fan?" 

"Oh no, there was more to it than that," he popped another seed into his mouth and continued, mumbling around it. "According to her parents, Elvis was synonymous with the devil, so she kept her stash of memorabilia at my house. Not that she had a lot by today's standards, but she had some magazines and a few singles she loved to play over and over again, which wouldn't have been so bad if Samantha hadn't decided she loved him too."

"What else are little siblings for besides the annoyance of older siblings?"

He glanced at her slyly and said, "Indeed."

Ignoring his teasing implication (which was, after all, not precisely an untruth) she continued on. "Bill's mission in life was to irritate Missy, and then mine and Charlie's after she left. I think Charlie got the worst of it, though."

"He probably idolized Bill," Mulder said.

"Mm. Bill isn't, at the time he wasn't...it's hard to explain," Scully stared at the surrounding desert, feeling her face flame with remembered embarrassment and odd humiliation. Stupid, of course, because there was no reason to feel either, not after all this time. Or at least, not for such reason as family history. A plea to 'Stop At Mesquite Pete's! ' came on the radio, followed by the station's call sign before launching into Smokey Robinson's 'Tears of a Clown' .

Mulder groped for his bottle of water, opened it, made a face at the taste but still chugged half of it, put it away again. "Anyway, after awhile I realized I knew the lyrics to just about every Elvis song. Drove my dad crazy when we were in the car. Mom loved it, though."

"And that's how you became a fan?"

"More or less. Familiarity and all that. Besides, everybody knows a little Elvis. Made a great icebreaker when I was in college, he was huge in Britain."

She shook her head. "Unbelievable."

"But what about you, Scully? I know you have some musical skeletons in your closet - don't think I've never noticed that Osmond Brothers record stuffed behind your collection of Grieg and Poulenc."

"That was a gift!" she protested. 

"Oh right, a gift. Along with the Best of Dr Demento? CSNY? Joni Mitchell? James Taylor? And what's with the Dan Fogelberg?"

"It's all from Missy. She left me all of her records." She shrugged. "I guess I've just never found the time to weed through it all or at least replace what I like with cd's. Except for the Dan Fogelberg. Even I have my limits."

Mulder chuckled. "Yet you still work with me on the X Files."

She wasn't about to admit she now had a fascination for the weird. Desert flashed by, a monotonous stream of brown and tan and red and dull, faded green, somewhat blurry from heat shimmer. She closed her eyes and attempted to nap, managed to reach that state which was neither sleep nor wakefulness and was doubly irritating for the lack. Finally she straightened, tried to work the kinks out of her neck and back. Yeah, this was why she got paid the big bucks. "We do get big bucks for this, right?"

"Big bucks? Oh. Oh yeah, yeah we do."

With a heavy sigh, Scully twisted in her seat and retrieved the file she had tossed into the back earlier. She flipped through it, shaking her head all the while. "I can't believe we're going to Area 51."

"Isn't it great? All these years and we finally get a vacation! And is it just me, or is this the strangest radio station ever?" Mulder asked, turning the sound up on a soft and sweet electronic drone that was vaguely familiar to Scully. He drummed the beat on the steering wheel, adding a flourish at the end. "I can feel it coming in the air to-night -"

She chimed in with an under-the-breath 'oh lord."

"This is one of those songs that should be on everyone's 'Music of Your Life' lists, don't you think?"

"I suppose," she answered, shifting from side to side to relieve the 'butt-itis' common to long drives and stakeouts. It wasn't one of her favorites, indeed, she always felt it bordered on the self-absorbed and boring. So of course she knew every single word. "Care to take a bet on what they'll play next?"

If Mulder hadn't stopped gawking at her they would have run off the road. 

"Seriously? A bet? You? With actual money?" he asked.

"Five bucks and a bag of gourmet seed if I lose," Scully said, ignoring his hammed up expression of stunned amazement. 

"And if you win?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "I'll think of something. Shall we go by decade or genre?"

 

~*~ fin ~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [X Files Lyric Wheel](http://www.hegalplace.com/xflyricwheel/) at Hegal Place.
> 
> Lyrics courtesy of Alyss!
> 
> Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight
> 
> I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord  
> I've been waiting for this moment, all my life, Oh Lord  
> Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord, Oh Lord
> 
> Well, if you told me you were drowning  
> I would not lend a hand  
> I've seen your face before my friend  
> But I don't know if you know who I am  
> Well, I was there and I saw what you did  
> I saw it with my own two eyes  
> So you can wipe off the grin, I know where you've been  
> It's all been a pack of lies
> 
> And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord  
> I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, Oh Lord  
> I can feel it in the air tonight, Oh Lord, Oh Lord  
> And I've been waiting for this moment all my life, Oh Lord, Oh Lord
> 
> Well I remember, I remember don't worry  
> How could I ever forget, it's the first time, the last time we ever met  
> But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, no you don't fool me  
> The hurt doesn't show; but the pain still grows  
> It's no stranger to you or me
> 
> And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord...


End file.
